Today was a continuation of “poultry theory” and an introduction to concentrated cooking (searing and roasting). We learned to truss a chicken several different ways, making sure to “keep the wings prisoner” (secure and strapped tight to the body) as Chef M. puts it in his funny, weird, French way.

On the menu today was roasted pork loin with braised red cabbage and sauteed apples and roasted chicken over a bed of mushrooms, glazed pearl onions, and lardons (chunks of bacon). Everything went fairly well with our first dish getting a big thumbs up from both Chef M. and Chef L. The second dish, the chicken, went fairly well except we lost a bit of our crispy skin when we were carving the chicken and a slight film had formed on our sauce due to insufficient skimming. Ah well, you win some, you lose some.

The real highlight of today was the special wine tasting with an Australian wine maker, Carlei, after class. We tasted a pinot grigio, a Chardonnay, a white blend, two Shirazes, a Pinot Noir, a Cabernet Sauvignon, and two red blends.

He spoke about a movement away from the hugely fruity, aggressive wines that have typically been imported from Australia. Carlei has striven to develop more sophisticated, elegant subtle wines that perfectly pair with food. His analogy of wine to food, while trite, seemed appropriate: wine is to food as a frame is to a painting. The winemaker emphasized that he specifically crafted his wines with food in mind, how it would react with foods, mingle with foods, enhance one’s experience of food.

I still have a lot to learn about wine tasting, I admit, but I could pick out the better wines of the bunch. I was not a fan of the blended white or the Chardonnay (I am not a fan of Chardonnay anyway), but the blended red called Tre Rossi, a combination of Shiraz, Nebbiolo, and Barbera, was phenomenal. I may not know a ton, but I immediately recognized that this wine was something special.

I drink a fair amount of wine and I can tell a good wine from a crap one, but it was tough for me to taste all the subtleties that were mentioned, the hints of kaffir lime, the notes of clove, the white pepper tones. I was able to recognize some of the flavors or aromatics after they were named, but then I didn’t know if that was kind of cheating (read: bull shitty) on my part.

PS – I just found out that Tom Colicchio (of Gramercy Tavern, Craft, and Top Chef fame) will be doing a demonstration at FCI on the 27th, AH! I’ve already emailed to volunteer to assist him, I just hope I beat out the rest of the hoardes. SO EXCITED!

Who Am I?

In a nutshell, I'm a food-crazed native New Yorker who just recently began culinary school at the French Culinary Institute and is reporting on her adventures.
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